The Witcher Season 2 smartly builds on what made Season 1 so beloved

Gizmodo

"When Netflix’s adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s Polish fantasy novels—spurred to global renown by the beloved video game adaptations by CD Projekt Red—landed this time two years ago, it catapulted itself to acclaim sometimes in spite of itself," says James Whitbrook. "Its second season shows signs of a show that saw that acclaim as a challenge to do better, and six episodes in, it’s more than proved itself. It might be reductive to say that The Witcher season 2—of which 6 episodes of its 8-long run were provided for review—is more of the Witcher we got in 2019, but better. There’s the same good fights, the same interesting worldbuilding, the same solid performances from its leads. There’s even a new attempt at a Jaskier banger, but try as you might, there’s likely no chance of topping the sheer virality of 'Toss a Coin to Your Witcher.' Perhaps then, it should be considered a testament to the confidence with which Lauren Schmidt-Hissrich’s series took stock of itself between its debut and becoming something of an international phenom, that its return smartly builds on what made its debut so instantly beloved, while winnowing away much of what didn’t quite work. For good measure it has also created a world that feels much grander in scale than the one we met in season 1, and populated it with characters that feel richer, more complex, and more deeply explored beyond season 1's tight focus on Geralt (Henry Cavill) and Yennefer (Anya Chalotra)."

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• The Witcher Season 2 is a vast improvement with higher production values and a simpler story: "Back in 2019, I was in the rare and unpopular position of disliking this show," says Gavia Baker-Whitelaw. "In addition to being overcomplicated and shallowly written, season 1 was hampered by a sexist origin story for its female lead (Yennefer sacrificed her fertility in a nude torture scene, to 'cure' her disability) and a wooden leading man. With the exception of Geralt’s sidekick Jaskier, I found The Witcher largely humorless and lacking in personality. With that in mind: Season 2 is a big step up! Production values are higher, particularly in terms of set design and practical effects for the monsters. We also benefit from a simpler narrative structure, adapted from the Witcher novels Blood of Elves and Time of Contempt. Geralt and Ciri spend several episodes in the witcher fortress of Kaer Morhen, introducing us to Geralt’s brethren and giving Ciri a chance to mature."
• Season 2 has an inexcusable lack of sex and Henry Cavill bathtub scenes: "The Witcher’s first season was rich with violence, spells, monsters, and intricate political intrigue, yet what truly energized its fantasy-land mayhem and mystery were its more colorful touches: a plethora of skin, sex, swearing, and an occasionally shirtless Henry Cavill responding to just about every dire situation with a curt grunt and/or a fed-up F-bomb," says Nick Schager. "Thus, it’s somewhat puzzling that the Netflix series’ highly anticipated return (Dec. 17) features plenty of the former qualities but almost none of the latter, delivering even more twisty-turny storytelling minus the humorous bawdiness, titillation, and profanity that lent it its distinctive personality. Cavill once again strikes a commanding pose as a slayer of all things supernatural, but his sophomore outing turns out to be robust when it comes to mythological machinations and limp in the departments that really count."
• The Witcher lets its lead off the leash in Season 2: "The Witcher Season 2 makes a lot of choices typical to second seasons of suddenly popular series," says Ben Travers. "What worked well is repeated, be it Henry Cavill’s husky, irritated energy or self-contained stories about men cursed into monsters. The established ensemble is separated, tasked with carrying their own arcs (and destined for a stirring reunion in the final episodes), while new characters set up supplementary goings-on to support a series now comfortable in its long-game. Enemies become allies, allies become enemies, and everyone wants to take a bath with Geralt. Goals are the focus — not necessarily completing any, but setting and pursuing them. (No baths with the Witcher through seven episodes, I’m afraid.) Everything is about the future and building to it, which makes less room for good, old-fashioned fights with multi-dentured she-demons and tentacled tree people. But they’re still there. The Witcher Season 2 can grow a tad exhausting as it walks through the world-building due diligence expected of a worldwide fantasy franchise (with four spin-offs already in the works). Not for the life of me could I explain what’s going on with the impending war, or what role the Elves will or won’t play in it — all I know is Legolas wouldn’t raise his bow for any of these schmucks — but hot damn, when The Witcher lets its lead off the leash, Netflix’s epic adventure absolutely rips."
• The second season of The Witcher benefits from all the groundwork laid out by the first: "While the characters are still reeling from battle, the show itself feels much more assured in the first six (of eight) episodes sent to critics for review," says Angie Han. "The narrative arc is cleaner, with everyone on the same timeline. The characters are better explained — including key supporting players like Fringilla (Mimî M. Khayisa), who felt frustratingly opaque in season one. The themes are more polished. And in the most pleasant surprise of all, the series feels more emotionally effective than it ever has before. If season one was worth watching mostly to see what bizarre new monsters Geralt (Henry Cavill) might slay or what irresistible new tunes Jaskier (Joey Batey) might sing about them, the second feels worth watching simply because we give a damn about all these people."
• A lot of what made The Witcher charming has been set aside in Season 2: "It feels as if, after the good times of Season 1, the series’s creator and showrunner, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, decided it was time to get serious — to start incorporating more of the elaborate mythology and terminology of Sapkowski’s books," says Mike Hale. "Now there are more and longer conversations filling in the history of the story’s setting, called the Continent, and of the various species who inhabit it, including elves, dwarves and humans. Geralt and Ciri come off the road and hunker down in a witcher fortress where she trains to be a warrior, leading to discussions of whether she’s a savior or a destroyer. (There’s also a sheen of topicality, with elves representing an oppressed Indigenous population.) We also get a raft of new characters, some of whom seem to pop up out of nowhere; keeping track of all the faces and folklore, not to mention beasts — a grisly central European menagerie of wyverns, strzygas, chernobogs and the like — starts to feel like studying for a final exam without any notes.On the positive side, the influx of new cast members includes Simon Callow and Liz Carr as a pair of paranormal investigators, Kim Bodnia of The Bridge as a veteran witcher and the Game of Thrones alumnus Kristofer Hivju as a tusked nobleman in a subplot recalling Beauty and the Beast. The story lines begin to coalesce, and the action begins to pick up, around the fifth episode."
• The Witcher has so many elements that should work but consistently fails to combine them into something entertaining: "Two years ago, I wrote about season one, 'At its worst, The Witcher is downright incomprehensible, so cluttered with characters, monsters, and overheated dialogue that it becomes hard to care,'" says Brian Tallerico. "Someone seems to have taken that common criticism to heart as the second season is undeniably narratively tighter. However, it still lacks the pulse a show like this needs to work. It’s a show with a world that can be fascinating to spend time in until you realize that you feel like you’ve been there way too long. It’s like a fancy party with gorgeous decorations but no one interesting to talk to. Season two starts with incredible promise, in no small part because it discards the chronological and narrative gamesmanship of season one, telling a story in a more traditional fashion. A lot of season two seems more traditional, although the show is often at its best when its admittedly impressive design elements are allowed to be surreal and strange. Some of the creature design here is remarkable, and the show can come to life in its big moments, especially when swords are swinging at monsters you’ve never seen before."
• The Witcher takes its story more seriously and tells it better in Season 2: "The new season has a gravity and heft—and sense—to it that the previous season lacked," says Leigh Butler. "The first season was a hectic, scattershot, often bewildering collision course of two (or arguably three) timelines, further muddied by two functionally immortal lead characters (Geralt and Anya Chalotra’s Yennefer of Vengerberg) whose lack of aging made it hard for the audience to grasp where we were in the timeline. Both the plot and the mood of the show jumped around erratically as a result. For all its entertainment value, it gave me narrative whiplash now and then. The madness resolves itself at the very last shot of the Season 1 finale, when Geralt and his destined Child of Surprise Princess Cirilla (Freya Allan) more or less literally run into each other and their separate time-and-plotlines finally meet up. Season 2 picks up precisely where Season 1 left off, but the change in tone becomes apparent almost immediately. The frantic pace eases up and the show seems to settle down, as if the creators have figured out where they’re going with the story and the characters, and how to get there without resorting to strange time-jumping shenanigans. It’s refreshing. The new season is also taking distinct advantage of the fact that its audience now has a grounding in this world—the characters, the setting, the basic rules, the stakes in play—and can get on with broadening and deepening those characters and their stories. This is what all second seasons should do, of course, but it’s remarkable how many choose to try and regurgitate the first season instead, trying to sustain their success by hewing to the original formula as closely as possible. The Witcher’s showrunners didn’t fall into that trap, and the show is much improved as a result."
• The Witcher is a series that understands the inherent absurdities of its fantasy world while making the silliness integral to its DNA: "This all-in approach, and the fact that the show doesn’t handhold its audience as much as throw them into the deep end with multiple timelines, explains why The Witcher’s first season endured mixed reviews from critics—Entertainment Weekly went so far as to give it an F grade," says Miles Surrey. "If you’re in, you’re in; if you’re out, well, you’re really out. The Witcher’s uncompromising weirdness is likely to handicap its broad appeal, at least on the level of monocultural popularity like Thrones—but that may very well be an impossible bar for any show to clear. For all intents and purposes, Netflix still has a sizable hit on their hands. Since Netflix’s in-house viewership numbers shouldn’t be taken at face value, it’s easier to measure an original series’ success by how much the streamer supports it, and ahead of its second season premiere, The Witcher has already been renewed for Season 3 to go with additional offshoots of its universe."
• The Witcher spreads itself thin in Season 2: "In a world with actual monsters — teeth-baring, blood-sucking, human-guzzling demons — and gods, elves, sorcerers and sorceresses, and all means of magic-wielding creatures, what qualities define humanity?" says Roxana Hadadi. "In the ambitious, uneven second season of The Witcher, the fantasy series filters that question through the narrative arcs of each of its primary trio of characters … and through their allies and enemies, onetime friends and future foes, strangers and acquaintances, and random people they meet throughout the Continent. This broad of a perspective makes for some appreciable worldbuilding as The Witcher imagines the disarray and chaos caused partially by the actions of protagonists Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill), Yennefer of Vengerberg (Anya Chalotra), and Ciri of Cintra (Freya Allen). But this next chapter in these characters’ intertwined story also slots them into more predictable fantasy arcs, and that familiarity saps The Witcher of some of the spontaneous and self-aware energy that so enlivened its first go-round."
• The Witcher loses some of the fun from Season 1: "The first season of Netflix’s live-action adaptation of The Witcher was a careful balancing act," says Andrew Webster. "In some ways, it was the service’s answer to Game of Thrones, a bloody fantasy epic with a story that spanned a continent (and many years). But, in keeping with the source material, it was also a lot of fun. There were creepy monsters to hunt each episode, some great comic relief in the form of an annoying bard, as well as steamy bath scenes and a full-on orgy. It had everything. Season 2 attempts to up the fantasy stakes by focusing on some of the bigger, more existential questions about The Witcher universe, from the origins of monsters to why a young princess’s screams create earthquakes. The result is a show that has a more ambitious, epic feel and one that also loses some of the personality that made it such a hit in the first place. These issues mirror the trajectory of the books, but they feel more pronounced in a live-action series where so much depends on the characters and their performances."
• It’s a little bit of a disappointment that Season 2 builds out a more intricate and serialized story in the Game of Thrones mold: "While this is partly a reflection of the source material — Andrezj Sapkowski’s Witcher fiction begins with short story collections that eventually give way to a five-novel epic — it’s also a significant retooling of the show’s structure," says Joshua Rivera. He adds: "In fact, so much of season 2 consists of careful plot bricklaying that it highlights how little was explained in the prior season. While The Witcher’s writers made the initially confounding decision to have that first batch of episodes unfold nonlinearly across three timelines, the plot threads were relatively free of knots when laid out in order. In retrospect, it was a good way to blend a serial story about the origin of the sorceress Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) of Vengerberg (the earliest timeline), episodic adventure stories following Geralt (the middle timeline) and meaty world building (the 'present' timeline following Ciri). Now that all of these main stories have converged, season 2 spends much of its time spinning them out again, this time in chronological order. The result is a Witcher series that is a little more conventional and a little less odd."
• The Witcher has a sense of direction and purpose in Season 2: Season 2 "is more of a wintry, somber affair than what’s come before," says Jarrod Jones. "It’s sullen in some respects, more determined in its mission now that its cast has grown more comfortable in their roles and its dark prophecy is finally (finally) beginning to take shape. Even the frisky bard Jaskier (Joey Batey) is singing a more maudlin tune this go-around. Yet The Witcher’s second season is vastly more confident about leaning into the high fantasy and higher stakes of Sapkowski’s lore, opting to let characters such as the wizened witcher Vesemir (Kim Bodnia) speak of forgotten histories instead of taking safer, more randy detours. (Expect the people of the continent to be more likely to keep their costumes on than tear them off.) Encouraging still is its stronger focus on maintaining a sense of narrative momentum (gone is the needlessly confusing time-hopping format of season one), at last bestowing upon The Witcher a sense of direction and purpose. That’s not to say there isn’t heaps of backstory and world-building to still keep track of, and it saddles itself with an ever-expanding cast of characters who have an alarming tendency to get lost in the shuffle of the first six episodes that were made available for review. But when it zeroes in on its central trio—Henry Cavill’s Geralt of Rivia, Freya Allan’s Princess Cirilla, and Anya Chalotra’s Yennefer of Vengerberg—and when it lets Geralt’s sword sing against the terrible roars of some fell beast, that’s when The Witcher operates at the heights of its powers."
• The Witcher showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich explains the new villains, the spinoffs and the Season 2 finale